5 Fabulous Roses

It’s time to stock up on your favorite roses, and just in time for the 4th here are five of mine!

With rose season in full swing I’m a little surprised at the paucity of samples i’ve received so far this year. In order to put together a nice selection of wines for this article i went shopping last week here locally. Locally being about an hour north of Manhattan NY. After speaking with my local retailers i see one reason for the paucity. Rose remain smolderingly hot and blissfully easy to sell.

You have to wonder if that is simply due to the festive color of these wines paired with the celebration for the long awaited arrival of summer. Roses can be delicious, but they are certainly far from universally fabulous, and with this newish explosion of interest in rose wine, which began about a decade ago, prices have certainly crept up. Roses can now be sweet or dry, cheap or expensive, powerful of light, fruity or mineral. Truth is of course that this was roughly always the case, it’s just that typically each of us only had access to a handful of examples each summer so we pretty much took what we could get. Well those days are over friends.

Yes we all now have access to an increasing number of Roses and with that comes an increasingly diverse selection and roughly no more info than we had before. It’s a minefield out there, so here are a few pointers to help guide you to the rose of your choice. I tasted 16 wines for this round-up, with only two topping the $15 mark and found plenty to like.

In a pack of fairly equivalent wines, at least as far as quality is concerned, my favorites come down to stylistic preferences. for my money these are the standouts.

I've also just tasted roses from Pinot Noir and Cabernet, though i will be writing those wines up separately for publication next week. For now, and looking towards this festive weekend, try and stock up on some of these delicious wines. I know that some of these will be hard to find so I’ll give you a little preview of next week. One rose that I almost always love is the Mulderbosch rose of Cabernet. Though sometimes a bit sweet for my palate the 2013 version manages its hint of RS very well and the wine is terrific!